Photos, Cooking, Music

All the desserts at Alimentum

The last time we were at Alimentum, a friend said that she wanted to go at some point and only eat desserts. That gave me an idea so as it was her birthday last week, I arranged just that and it turned out the perfect way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.We started proceedings with an Espresso Martini (which I neglected to take a photo of, oops) and we opted to have a starter so we didn't only have sweets.

Sweetbreads and chicken wing confit with wild garlic. Brilliant little dish with crispy sweetbreads and very soft chicken wings. On to all the desserts.

"Black Forest Gateau" Obviously not the rich cake from the 70s but taking the various elements and presenting them in a modern way. The sponge was as light as a feather and the cherry elements varied from sweet to tart, all balanced beautifully.

Next, we shared a portion of the Battenburg which I had last time so have a look here for a description.

On to two dishes featuring white chocolate. On the left a white choc parfait (the ball) with passionfruit and on the right a white choc pannacotta with rhubarb. In both dishes, the tartness of the fruit/vegetable was counteracted by the sweetness of the white chocolate, creating a wonderful balance. Each element on its own would have been too sweet or too tart. We only had one of those and swapped halfway through.

The pernod foam with pineapple and fennel was next. Again, a photo and short description are in this post.

Then, the killer: A chocolate and passionfruit terrine with honeycomb. A very rich, dark chocolate ganache with more passionfruit elements. The honeycomb crumbles on top provided a light crunch rather than sweetness. Superb.

During the final course we again shared two dishes: On the left, a blackcurrant mousse with crumble and vanilla ice cream. Very light, very fruity and flavourful. On the right, a Crème Brûlée with caramelised cassia bark, black cherry sorbet and almond tuile was a sweeter dish but not overpowering. The layer of melted sugar on top was almost transparent. Beautiful.

I am going to amend this with the wine list if I manage to find out what we had (a different one with each course, except the pernod foam), I can't remember them all, my memory became kind of hazy after a certain point. I think I have to take photos of the bottles on my phone to help my memory along.

Huge thanks go to the staff at Alimentum who not only went along with this crazy idea (apparently this was the first time somebody had requested an all dessert menu which I find hard to believe) but made it a very memorable afternoon indeed.